Philip Ramsey

2003-04 Outbound to Italy

Date of Birth: May 10, 1987

Hometown: Jacksonville, Florida

School: Douglas Anderson School of the Arts

Sponsor: Southpoint Rotary Club, District 6970, Florida USA

Host: Cremona Po Rotary Club, District 2050, Italy

Philip's Bio

Words to describe myself.  It is hard to say.  Well, I am sixteen years old, a writer, a wanderer, and what some consider thoughtful.  Before leaving for Italy, I was going to a school of the arts in Jacksonville.  My focus at this school was creative writing. I love to write. Ha, that last sentence, “I love to write”, the word love was misspelled a second ago and I accidentally wrote, “I live to write.”  A simple mistake, but it is interesting because to me, writing is something to live for.  Thinking about it as a form of art I begin to think that if art is an expression of self, than by writing, I am communicating me to you.  Helping you understand me. What else is there?

There is more to me than words. Having no means of travel, other than my own two feet on many occasions, I have begun to know the sidewalks of Jacksonville, Florida as good as the back of my hand. Endless walking.  People don’t considering walking to be all that of a difficult task, but I am here to say, it is.  Not so much for the body, but for the mind.  You are alone with yourself.  It is the equivalent of entering into an empty room and standing silently for hours. Walking for hours.  One more thing about me.

October 13 Journal

The world according to PHilip RAmsey.

My last time speaking with you, I was confident about the endeavor I was about to undertake. a friend once told me that confidence finds its roots in ignorance. he was probably right. as you may already know, I am in Italy.

the past month, has been comprised of me accepting the existence of a different reality, or rather, accepting my existence in a reality standing far off from the one that I was born into. when I first got here, I marveled at the beautiful marble walls and the insufficiently narrow streets, the cobblestone, the churches, the seven year olds with a smokers cough worse than my addicted uncle's... every insignificant detail was a masterpiece painted with centuries of delicate preservation for me.

now, I am comfortable and at home here. it grows harder and more hard for me to logically imagine just how exactly I used to function in a world so different from this one. with my slow and progressive knowledge of the language growing, I become more and more a member of this society. with open arms I am accepted as an authority on the mind of America and they gladly receive my perspective on the world.

of course. certain issues must be avoided.

the war that America is involved in, for example. just walking down the streets of Italy, you can see that most people here are against this war. from windows everywhere there are colorful flags hanging, saying "PACE," meaning peace. an expression of their pleasant and quiet protest.

it is hard to restrain myself from getting involved in these sort of talks, but what I say will be taken as the ideals of an entire nation, and therefore, cannot be said.

and on. the world according to philip is a world of routine.

my life: after settling into my new life, a certain euphoria establishes itself in my mind. sitting quietly in the back of my head is the knowledge that my current reality is what a dream consists of. and the awareness that I will not wake from this dream stems a plethora of emotions. it makes me nervous. this is for the simple reason that I still do not fully speak the language here and every step I take must be taken cautiously and with reservation because there is no way for me to explain to anyone my inhibitions. I also feel a tinge of regret. regret at my having left all that I know and love. I love Jacksonville. and miss it and all the people that I have come to form strong relationships with. however there is an established excitement and anticipation for all the experiences I am stumbling upon. I am learning an entirely new way of life. it is slowly becoming my life.

My day: in Italy, there are three types of schools; the school of the classical literature, school of the arts, and school of mathematics. I attend the school of mathematics. we have school Monday thru Saturday and the times of school vary from six hours a day to four. after school, I tend to go home and have lunch with my host mother (who is a fantastic cook). then I usually take a bike ride through the countryside. go to the Oglio River and sit by it while updating my journal. the land is beautiful here. everywhere you go there is open country and fresh air. on Tuesdays I play soccer with the local soccer team and twice a week my host brother and I go to the gym in the city. days run together here. because they are so similar in their routine, everyday seems like the continuation of a blissful rest from the anxieties of America (for there is no room for anxiety in our schedules). as a dream lacks the essence of time, so these days lack necessity for numbers.

me: I am happy here. my classmates are more than kind (they recently took me on a trip to a festival in Modena). although I do not quite feel as if I have found my place amongst the people here, give it time, philip. much of my free time is spent worrying about how things are being kept up in Jacksonville. I am somewhat concerned that when I return, the world will have gone upside down in my absence. I know this will not be the case. it is simply the nature of fear to distort truth in such a manner.

well. as of now, that is all. you will hear from me again. shortly.

November 7 Journal

In the past month i have written thirty-seven emails pertaining to this topic.
Emails consisting of 'i went here' and 'i did this' type of language.
Forgive me if i leave those lines out in this conversation-style entry.

In sixth grade i read a book by Gary Paulsen called "The Hatchet."
It is a fiction about a young boy who was on his way from some city in america where he lives with his mother to canada.
His father lives in canada and he was going to go visit for a while.
Well.
The pilot had a heart attack in flight and they ended up crashing into a forest somewhere in the middle of northern america.
The boy survived the crash and learned to survive in the forest for a long amount of time before being discovered and rescued.

The thing that struck me that i still remember was towards the end of the book.
When the boy was back home. He was trying to explain what it was like living out there in the wild.
And all that he could come up with was the hunger. How there was always only one goal in mind and one thing to work for. The next meal.

Here. I begin to feel a similar sensation. However for me it is not in the pangs of my stomach. It is the language. It is in words. My independence and self-sustaining attributes lie in wait for me to be able to sustain a conversation. I crave the language and all of its intricacies as he must have craved the simplicity of drive thru service. To be fluent. Oh to speak as the wind moves. That is what my mind pursues.

It is the morning fogs that get to me. Something that florida is deprived of. Fogs that descend while we lay dreaming. And when we wake, they present our minds with that almost believable idea that we are still dreaming. If it weren't for the frosty air, we may find ourselves believing.
On the bus to school there is always somewhat of a quarrel between the older kids to get to sit in the back. Well. I try to get as close to the windshield as possible on these trips. Because there is mystery in only seeing the next ten meters of road. And often i will turn my head to watch the fields that have been beyond harvest for two months now. This nebulous gives them all the glamour and glory that they must feel they lack in these colder times. It is the type of beauty that the poets call sorrow. And i love it.

Imagine a sawmill. Right on a river somewhere out west. Logs always floating in from upstream where the loggers send them from. These are the schools. the loggers being the teachers. And well. After two months, i am still a bump on one of those logs. the teachers here speak much faster than anyone else. And as a consequence, i cannot follow the lessons. I don't mind too much. My italian professor has an expansive english library so i spend most of my time in school either studying the language, or reading some new book that i snatched on my way out of lesson.

Things are not better nor worse. Just different.
A philosophy that us exchange students must never let go of. The most efficient cure for homesickness i have found is the 'Save as draft' portion of my email account. Centuries from now when archeologists stumble upon the thousand upon thousand of words in rant and rave that exist in this file, they will probably assume me to be some sort of strange adventurer that did nothing all his time in the land beyond but write about the land he came from. Which in a sense i am. And i do. But the world turns and it has been gracious enough to take me along.

Gracious. A better way of putting it would be that i am now on one of those experiences that we have in our lives where we spend too much of our time making the observation that this completely breaks through the realm of what we ever could have hoped to have expected and extends into the sphere of a gift given by really amazing people who just want to change lives. They have.

I feel like a metaphor right now. As if some day someone will use me and my life as an analogy to some bigger picture that they are trying to draw. The bigger picture being ... the humanitarian heart? The vocational beginning of adaptation? The taste of a good merlot? I have no idea. I think that is why i still feel it. Like the fog, i hold on to it's appeal because it incites me with that romantic flare of mystery.

I see Freudian slips come about with nearly every sentence i try to produce. Of course, they are merely mistakes of my unlearned tongue. But i am very suspicious that it knows better what i am really wanting to say, and thus when the lady rings me up at the counter for my panini and caffe and i say 'congratulations!' instead of 'see you later!' well. I wonder if it was a mistake. Or if deep within all of us there is the smallest bit of a cynical humor.

I am going to wrap it up now.
End it with a french adieu and a farewell to friends.
Well, i'll see you in a month right?
Same time as always.

And as a friend once put it:

this is philip signing off from the front lines.

December 4 Journal

And of the now. Moments. Like. Escaping nothing. Remember when. Wait. That was. Now. Is. Moments. Superlative. Like.

This is my third time telling you stuff. Before starting this sentence, and after ending the one before, I went back and read every other stuff I told to you. This world is different from those described to you previously.

it is December now. December in Cremona is the color of fog. Without the lack of vision. You can see miles of blank stares. Blank grasses. Blank statues. Blank streetlights. Blank trees. Blank leafless limbs. Blank cobblestone. Blank churches. Blank. Blank. Everyday I work with words (I work on their combination for meaning, rubbing them together until my mind becomes blistered by their friction) to fill in the blank with an imagination of centuries of color being worked off and battered down on by rain and years and the. Unending amount of gravity that keeps bringing us back to earth. I watch this world slowly cover itself with an oneiric haze.

I feel a new and unsteady amount of gravity being placed on me as I begin to speak. As I begin to speak Italian, the unattached and floating sense of "this is just a moment. let us watch it as it passes," moves away. I become grounded on this land. I become a member of something. Something similar to action. To the general beauty of action. I do not move through the motions of those leading me. I now make my own motions. Move my hands through the water. Create my own waves.

And I watch days pass. Watch them like the day before. The beautiful day before. Becomes the beautiful tomorrow. And I wonder which day is going to bring the regret of not inscribing each second. Into words. Into mind's eye. But promenading through my routine is more cogent than losing these times to wondering how many moments are left. And so. The world becomes one again with the dexterity of grandfather time pulling strings to help me fall into place. All it takes is time. The world becomes one.

I have a performance the eighteenth of this month. My first performance. It is with an actor here, a guitarist, a singer, and a violinist. It is for the Rotary Christmas party. We have been practicing for it and I think it will go alright. But my host mother said that I should get a haircut and shave for the performance (it's been a while since I really looked in a mirror). This actor said that in the spring he will be asking me to work with him on some other projects. We'll see how that turns out I guess. But, the performance is the eighteenth, admission is free so long as you are on the invite list. Hope to see you there.

________________________________

this line represents the lapse of seven hours. Seven hours ago from when I am writing this, I told you more stuff. In between those seven hours, I learned a fair amount of stuff. For instance, I now know my next three families. In January I go to a family with two boys and a dog. One boy is my age. I've met him. He smiles a lot and likes to play chess. After this family, I go stay with the principal of my school. He is a jolly old fellow who always wears a nice suit. And then I return back to the family I am in for the end of the year. The year. The year. For the rest of my life, whenever I say "the year," there will be a specific year that I will be talking about. (this one).

And the rest of my life is very much up in the air after these past three months. Where does one go after decidedly changing their life? Back to the "good ole industrial pathway on which ye hath begun"? But how laughably unutterable those words become. Lives don't change just for the sake of stockpiling memories. Do they? I wonder if I will ever be settled in America after this. In Jacksonville. A (originally A was a mistype, but then I decided that A could stand for: me) received a book in the mail from a friend. It was a beautiful book sent for the purpose of lightening the load of loneliness that A bore. It was a gift from a wizard, A assumes. For it worked like magic. But it also produced other effects inside of A. it was a story of a traveler in her first journey, a journey that has led her to a life of searching. And A wonders what she is finding. I wonder if I will find the same.

This is my December update on the situation in Italia. Me being the situation. This week I have to plan my return trip home. It seems a bit too early to decide. I guess it probably should be before September. But that seems so little time. My father says "usually in July." I guess we'll see, right?

It is December now. A blank December. A December filled to the brim with: Alacrity. Edification. You know. Stuff.

I am going now. Got stuff to do.

Bye.

Philipramsey.

January 7 Journal

the secondary roads

of the american dream."

Let's start with a quote. We'll begin with arthur miller and his perspective of middle class america and what it is that they hope (beyond hope) to get out of life. The american dream. With this quote, we'll start from end and move backwards.

Next step after the great playwright: the secondary roads. We will not follow suit. We will instead take your directions and sort of kind of maybe get sidetracked by something more relevant to our misunderstanding of the way the world should be. We will wander from the director's cut, revised edition, abridged and unforwarded story of a path that robert frost did not take, to the last (or was it first?) addition to our understanding of this quote.

 Destiny. Virgil says that Aeneas got his told to him more than once by mother, lover, god of earth, god of sea, god of everything you can imagine, even enemy and still was found unsure of his next steps at times. I wonder which road signs are mine. I wonder if this quote that we sit dissecting now was built for me. But. These are things irrelevant.

Shall we?

I found peace in milan. It was waiting in the form of rest for my late night weary eyes. It sat anticipating my arrival on a modern-style red sofa in a college girls room. The sheets already made for a fellow traveler to kick shoes off and smile. We spent our time (our being us being myself, avia (rotex from cremona who studies in milan), and jordan (texan just vacationing on rotary's time)) walking San Babila and solving all the mysteries of those strange gaming gambling hustlers with their one-eyed jacks and their papercups. But there was more. There were shakespearean arguments on the value of time, there were ballroom dances, there were trees, there were icy needly winds, there were metro rides at midnight, there were grocery stores, there were

But we will move on.

I came back from milan with an air of inevitable change. The night of my return. The telephone taught me to recognize the voice of an american comrade of mine that i had not thought of in long. The night of my return we spoke of art. and of the growth that has been the essence of my personal movements of form. We spoke. And talked. And whispered about dead adventures. And shouted about tomorrow's. and something that had been laying dormant inside of me since my arrival was awakened. He told me he may find his roads crossing the milestone that is Paris. In march. I hope our roads may cross in this city. In this time. In this time.

Tomorrow. I change families for the first time. I have been living and learning with the Bertoglio family for five months. But Rumor jumped the gun last week and came into my quiet sleep and softly cleared my mind to paint pictures of tomorrow. I am ready. But i leave the village of Scandolara. Become another city child. We will see what effects may come. What affects may grow.

In Italy, i am philip ramsey. The scruffy, ruffled, scraggly writer that smiles a lot and happened his way here from america. Now, having opened the doors and watched the peaceful solitude blow in the wind to be replaced with joyful conversation and the 'slapontheback' friendships that seem to come in surplus in this nation, i am philip ramsey. One and the same as when i left. Except. Well. The exception not coming to my mind in clear cut simple format. Let me turn to the words of someone i trust. Dickens said,

"it was now too late and too far to go back, and i went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me."

A metaphor.

If a rose does not bloom than it is not a rose. It is simply a weed with thorns.

A week ago, i saw a beggar, leaning on his wooden crutch. He cried to the passerbyers stories of the birth of italy. In times where children were the rose and the great empire that they were birthed under, the sun and rain. I want to be that rose. Blooming under the influence of thousands of years of sacred solemn radiant serenity and fruitbearing ethereal jovial triumphant

When the sun shines i notice the last word of the unended sentence caught echoing off of the brick and marble walls. A word that i reach for. Grasping, tearing at the nothing that seperates us. I hear it on the lips of mothers chiding their children to wear their scarves tighter around their necks. In the accordian chords of the city block wanderers who sing songs for quarters as we go about our way. A word that maybe possibly probably will not come to me today. But it is the most important portion of this journal. It is why i came to italy.

You will here from me again.

Soon.

Philipramsey

p.s. the quote was not of arthur miller. It comes from a north carolina poet named fitzgerald. I was introduced to her words by my mother. By my mother that i love so dearly.

February 7 Journal

 

I did not realize that at a certain point in the year the complications would stop being cultural and start being the same type of stuff we worry about in America. well. hello.

i want to write you-
[(i want) to watch
the clouds sway
like
the lacing fingers of the weeping willow
(the one that stretches out into the calm river)
(i want) to watch
you.
first in my perspective;
the clouds
behind you.
you
(the wind
ruffling the calm blank
-et of water
with her
extend
-ed hands)
moving]
a poem.

Id call it romance. But it would be false to find first love in the warm wind passing winter from us. The sun set itself at four thirty yesterday. Me. My beingness. Stretched on an extended ended tree. I was thinking and thinging things inside a mind that watched four walls(balance) become and lose and manipulate innocence (youth) into personal growth (life). Balance was lost when youth became life.

There was a borrowed bicycle, an american boy, an ancient myth of a flowing Po river, music. E.E. Cummings' orange winds passing. I found a secret place in the woods surrounding the southern tip of my city. Seven kilometers outside of the town and nearing the province, through mud and bush and trees stands Peace; Beauty. I watched myself in dreams emerge onto the field of psyche as she picked the golden fleece from the grazing rams. The colors. Sunsets and. The silence of flocks of birds returning. And. Colors are music.

But I do not think that is true. It must be inverted, rather. The undying goal of music must be a visual and superlative splash of surging of spectral reflective light on canvas. it is not the single drops of water that hit the canvas roof of the market fruitstand that catch the eye, it is the unbearable weight of all, the encumbering mass of millions of molecules of water that break through the sheeted covering and it is the universally recognized beautiful bombous BOOM as it  splashes against the cobblestone road. BEAUTY. BOOM BELLEzza.

(bathe in ethereal wind).

i was sitting on a bench. it was not a park bench and i am not just speaking in first person as a narration for a universal understanding of setting a fictional scene for a fictional her. i was sitting on a bench. and the sun broke a line through the clouds. and there were birds singing. and the wind picked up a newspaper that had been left on the sidewalk. and a man was holding a briefcase and walking fast and there were cars in the world making things noisy.
and i realized that this was happiness.

and it began to rain and i fell in love with days like today. walking home. the rain kept me from being dry. from drying out. and i was in one of those states. Who was it? Big Bird. He said. be happy.

tap
pingat the thekeys right now. this is one of the only times of the week that i get to read/think in english. so humor me.

Oh, I haven't said a single thing about italy. But I think there is  purpose in that. Because obvious variations have occurred in the past little while. These were anticipated and their arrival was unnoticed. But I realized after the sending and response of emails from a friend that. The complications and problems of the rest of this year have become only of a domestic nature. That cultural and lingual and blah blah blah no longer present obstacles. Home is where (I'll say it again) home is where we are probably maybe it is comfort. Home is comfortable and gives us the opportunity to be anxious and sit on sofas and lounge and make midnight snacks and invite friends for tea and borrow socks from brothers and home is where is where is where I and probably is possibly the thing that allows me! to grow close is comfort. Bringing this nonsensible enigmatic update to a close, home is where I am.

pHilipramsey

March 17 Journal

two months ago i realized something about italy that fascinated me. it started with a phrase that i said in italian that we use in english. 'I grow older' so i said 'cresco piy vecchio'. but i was told that they do not say it like that. they say 'divento piy grande'. which translates to 'i become bigger.'

it set me on a train of thought about the mindset of this nation and how they have similar modes and phrases that vary from america only in the respect that it separates the man from mortality. the speech used to speak about the natural progression of man (although unconsciously) is very much a discussion of evolution and the progression of soul above self. man does not grow. he becomes. not 'how old are you', but 'how many years do you have'. Maybe there is nothing there to learn and it is just the common mode of speech. Or maybe this is all the difference separating worlds from worlds, realities from realities.

memories of places that you have left slowly walk away from you until you turn around to watch them and realize that they have disappeared into the silent echo of dreams. right now america and family and friends and home has taken the image of something that is not actually real. just a dream i had last night that will be forgotten soon. i know that when i return home, italy will become that dream. and i fear that for the rest of my life i will be left to chase dying dreams. one place to the next. unending.

I went to rome for a week. On rome: this is the sound of rome at early one morning.

statued_byron sat in villa borghese and i passed him and he stood grave and strong with marble eyes and i thought that this must be a day undeserving of less than history made in certainty.

i played a game of hackysack in the coliseum with a friend and then he accidentally kicked it over the fence and near the ledge and i jumped the fence and stood on the ledge knowing something was in the in that i was there.

i refuse to speak english wherever i go. they hear my accent and insist on assuming that it would be easier for me to speak in english but i walked out of seven stores and one bar today and this evening because when i asked for 'due panini' he replied 'two sandwiches?' and so this world comes to a place where sitting across from my friend i tried to make my complaint against it but before speaking i tried to name the countries of the world without their english speaking capitols.

short list.

rome is rome. it does not die. i saw a man with an accordion hanging across his back and he had a cup in his hand and i chuckled and said that 'you're not getting much money without making the song' and he began to play and he played with soul and eternity and a blue wind poured down upon us from marble stones broken by earlier winds blown upon them.

i watched him play and i watched his eyes because his eyes watched mine and every intended solo in the single man band was presented with a wink from an eye that knows more than this world has taught it.

in vatican city i climbed sixhundred and something steps and saw you, rome. i saw you as you slept through yawning morning sun and your life was motionless in grey light and i sat with you perched next to sanpietro and benedicto.

I spent two mardi gras days in Venice. On venice:

I lose my

Self and my

Belonging desire to long night

O Venice. (you

Will always be my sadness that was gifted

So dear ago

To me from that stolen silhouetted

Memory of dream)

Your night stretched from

Bridge spot to bridge

I love you and you steal me.

venice. i smelled the sea in venice as i taxied across the bay to the city. i fell in love with that city. tomorrow i think i'll go buy a gondola and just head out there to make my money as a tourist trap.

lines in stores do not exist. we just all use our memory about who was first. you walk in and memorize every face already in there and you do not walk up to pay until every face is checked off either by paying or indicating with a nod of the head or a tip of the hat or some other gesture that you are to go before them. that's how i do it anyway. some people just walk in and pay and skip all the others but i like it my way.

don't ever leave or change or grow.

this morning.

i have been the background to thousands of strangers foto albums.

philipramsey

April 6 Journal

The improbable happens when we close our eyes. The mind is its own cycle and our thoughts run in patterns as our body rests. Images, sounds, textures, fragrances all can be created and recreated through the medium of an ever expanding memory. wherefore, the proposition stands that there is, in its own right and entirety, another world, another reality, something else that consumes the void, that in itself enraptures us, while we lay our heads to sleep. But I am not here to discuss the nature of dreams, instead I would like to share with you the essence of actualities.

At night, While sleeping, with my head thrown against the cotton covering of my well indented pillow, the identities of my family, the entities of my comrades, my friends, my loves spread out across this earth, are with me. Strangely, you do not hear my voice when I speak out to you. When I call for you to draw near so that we might embrace as only loved ones do, you do not heed my cry. Instead I watch good Time and black Night dance together through the thick and thorn-covered fields of Fear.

Italy, you are the closest that I have found to Silence. and I thank you for it. Tho' at times my Voice and my Sad and my Rage and my Worry have pelted your stars with unjustified questioning, your wisdom, your strength to teach the world through patience and quiet, has given me everything.

Well, Jacksonville, How're ya doin'? here i live in a routine that is broken every week or two weeks by my insistence on not falling down in a pit of redundancy which is when i hop a train on over to Milan or Parma or somewhere and stay with a friend for a night or two and open all the windows and sing old folk songs while drinking warm tea and watching cab drivers zip on by on the roads beneath our window.

I'm goin' to Greece in a lil' while. My friend went to Barcelona. He bought me the Biggest Sombrero he could find in all of Spain.

It's BIG.

Through pathos and fog, sitting in a blue metal chair (stand, sit, stand, sit; movement influenced by the motions of the heart), searched and found was the word.

Silence.

Tho' Night has stolen these solemn lofty flights through radiant skies, I steal back Moment's hand and drag her through Daedalus' sky-lined path from Minos' kingdom to the rising Mountaintop of Chalcis. we chase the zigzagging line of Rumor through rumbling countrysides. Moment and I. Her hair flows behind her and her green eyes shine within their holy hollowed dome.

i try to speak but she and I both know that there is no word without paradox. no perfection with description. I want to shout I want to dream I want to fly. (you stand next to me, glorious Moment, and I cannot hide from your eternity. You are stoicism's strength defined by nothing; Epicurus' sip of water. I want to tell you about how I will not wear this world and all its burdens. That I will stand on Perseus' clouds and learn from moving light. That I will escape this thick, heavy, mantle of mortality. I will escape like a cat in a hat that got out. or better yet. like a box of dynamite that turned out to be just another dud.)

I will shout I will dream I will Fly

philipramsey

May 24 Journal